Not walking on glass

I wrote a memo the other day and could not help but emphasize on the importance of using good ol' wit and common sense, when on the internet. I probably had the gall to write these since I'm recklessly doing stuff on Ubuntu and couldn't care less if an intrusion breaks something. LOL. Windoze is like walking on glass. Some of the guidelines I wrote:

4. Browse and click responsibly. Do not be lured by pop-up ads or
participate in online surveys or contests.

5. Stop forwarding chain mail. Although these mails may start as
harmless simple email messages with valid content, you do not know where
it has been! Think clean, and say to yourself: "This chain mail stops
with me." and promptly delete it.

6. Keep you Windows firewall or any other firewall software up! It is
there to protect you and not deprive you of internet activity.

I'm back and look what I checked out first!

This is how the rear of the NetBay rack in my previous company looks like now. I headed back to CDO for Halloween vacation and was able to drop by the office to pick up some of my personal stuff. They've slapped in a Cisco router (where the yellow fibre cable hooks up to) and another L3 switch. The old firewall appliance is still there, reliable as ever. Cabling got more structured as well. Now that's what I'm talking about!

It's crazy, but when you've got a baby that you built for years and had to leave one time or another, you get somewhat near it and it's the first thing you look for!

So I'm proud of starting this and making things happen, and I'm proud of the team that continued to make things happen. Hats off to Ian, Gayang, Sherlabs, and Derf. You're all the best! Make them drool! :)

Google Maps API Discovery

Okay, it has been around for quite some time, and I remember writing an article about this in my older tech blog. I have a month to finish a pre-proposal on something GIS-related, so I'm seeing how this can be made possible with a renewed fascination with Google Maps.

I'm currently catching up on readings for my thesis pre-proposal. Some projects are quite interesting, notably those that do geographic encoding, location tracing via IP, or widget development, using Google Maps technology.

How would you like Google Maps to work for you? You can identify the need, depending on what industry you're in, and how you envision tracking applications as used in your locality. This guy thought of plotting his GPS-generated hike/bike trails onto Google Maps. He also made mention of parcel tracking (UPS) and driving directions, both utilizing the lat/lon coordinate system of Google Maps.

Another implementation that I've seen in action is plotting website visitors on Google Maps, just like the application by gVisit.com, which I use in this website. It doesn't stop there. The possibilities are mind-boggling; it will seem that the hardest part is getting down to a specific application.

You can get more ideas here and here.

Next stop, finalizing my pre-prop.

GRASS

I had a good consultation session with my mentor last Saturday and I got great advise for my thesis. I'm planting my foot on GIS and applications, but the whole gamut of GIS is fairly large so I had to zero in on what I really wanted to focus on. Future research prospects on GIS led me to look up Geographic Resources Analysis Support System, commonly referred to as GRASS. It's so cool because for starters, it's GPLed, and it will run on PostgreSQL. It's primarily designed for Linux so I need to have Cygwin run on the host that I will be using to interface with our Linux and non-Linux backends.

In a nutshell, my thesis will be concentrating on GIS and data warehouse integration. Should there be an existing or current data warehouse for me to work on, I should be able to model the integration, using the appropriate schema. Should there be no data warehouse, I will have to model from scratch and present and enforce the design.

[Critique] Implementing a public web based GIS service for feedback of surveillance data on communicable diseases in Sweden

Article by Per Rolfhamre¹ , Katarzyna Grabowska1 and Karl Ekdahl^{1, 2
1}Department of Epidemiology, Swedish Institute for Infectious Disease Control, Nobels väg 18, SE-17182 Solna, Sweden
²Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institute, SE-17177 Stockholm, Sweden

The authors have sufficiently summarized the study by including the purpose, methods, results, and conclusions or summary. The study was focused on the discussion of the considerations and technology of a created public web-based GIS service, which has already been deployed. The abstract is not entirely written in the past tense.

The article doesn’t have an introduction part, and instead presented a background of the study. Although citations are made, the review of literature was very minimal. There were no references to similar works done in the area of study in this part of the study. References to similar systems are done in the discussion of results part of the study. The underlying concepts, especially on the importance of making data on communicable diseases available to the public via internet, was only mentioned and barely discussed.

There was no hypothesis or research question posted on the study. What seemed to be the thrust of the study was the conjecture in that making surveillance data available in the internet, especially to public health officials, was key to policy-making, prioritization, and information related activities.

The authors have presented data collection and processing procedures in paragraph form. There was no further attempt to expound on the methods, and there were no charts or figures to support the discussion of the processing procedures. Likewise, the presentation of the hardware and software configuration was done in passing.

The authors were able to present and discuss the results of their study well. As their study was focused on the system, the basic application design, the work or process flow, database structure, user interface, and usage, were sufficiently presented. The discussion focused on the design principles used, security, performance, and quality concerns. There was mention of data interpretation, but this was for general consumption and only applied for the locality. This part of the study presented similar systems that already exist in other parts of the world, using a short comparison of features, but not as in-depth as necessary.

The authors made recommendations for improvements, and discussed possible enhancements and/or changes in the system, the area of study, and in the available technology.

Notes:
URL: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2334/4/17
Received 25 February 2004
Accepted 10 June 2004
Published 10 June 2004
© 2004 Rolfhamre et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.
This is an Open Access article: verbatim copying and redistribution of this article are permitted in all media for any purpose, provided this notice is preserved along with the article's original URL.


[Critique] Positional error in automated geocoding of residential addresses

Article by Michael R Cayo and Thomas O Talbot
Geographic Research and Analysis Section, Bureau of Environmental and Occupational
Epidemiology, New York State Department of Health, 547 River Street, Room 200,
Troy, NY 12180-2216, USA

The authors have sufficiently summarized the study by including the purpose, methods, results, and conclusions or summary. The study has identified positional error correction as their purpose, with the objective of determining if the errors in geographic encoding could impact results. The study focused on the discussion of the ability of GIS-based applications to locate residential addresses as closely as possible with the proposed alternative method of geographic encoding using residential property parcel data, instead of the automated geographic encoding.

The study emphasized on the application of GIS-based systems in public health, and how important precision in geographic encoding is to ensuring that public health studies are not compromised. There is extensive literature review on geographic encoding. The authors have noted that the underlying concepts and theories of this study have been documented in other studies, in that they were able to present the problem and justify the need for research. The study also indicates that there was limited public information on positional error correction, further emphasizing the need for research.

The problem statement has clearly identified what needs investigation, which emphasized on finding out if positional errors could impact public health data analysis results. As a solution, the authors have proposed their method of geographic encoding, which they expect to address these concerns.

The authors were able to specifically indicate their methods for collection of geographic data, beginning with residential addresses. This data is used as a starting point for geographic encoding and analysis. The authors indicated some exceptions, which according to them, will greatly increase positional errors in any geographic encoding method because of some missing details in the geographic data. The geographic encoding process was presented, together with the validation methods that were used in showing how much positional error resulted from the geographic encoding methods used. The authors were likewise specific in the analysis methods that they used for the study.

Although quite brief, the authors were able to present the results of their study well, using tables to compare positional errors between the geographic encoding methods used. The researchers were also very thorough in their discussion of their findings, pointing out the obvious improvements in positional error correction with their proposed method of geographic encoding. They also made suggestions as to how parcel points can be standardized, because the encoding and storage of this data is done by the local government and may not exist in similar formats.

The authors made recommendations for improvements, stating that their study is localized and may not be reflective of the level of positional error that the current geographic encoding method has, using topographically integrated geographic encoding and reference files.

Notes:
URL: http://www.ij-healthgeographics.com/content/2/1/10
Received 10 September 2003
Accepted 19 December 2003
Published 19 December 2003
© 2003 Cayo and Talbot; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article: verbatim copying and redistribution of this article are permitted in all media for any purpose, provided this notice is preserved along with the article's original URL.